If any candidate can even take us in baby steps towards a new direction in our health care – it would be a great and noble thing to do. Our healthcare system right now is fraught with the same apathy and misdirection our education system finds itself at. My mother is driven home from her work with the “classic symptoms of a heart attack” – her doctor tells her to take two aspirins and call in the morning. No, okay, he tells her to go get blood work and then come see him when the results are in – what!
She then goes to see her cardiologist on her on because she is stumbling, dropping objects, confused, and vomiting. Her cardiologist sends her home with a clean bill of health saying her EKG was perfect. The nurse there tells me on the phone later that she “can’t believe my mother was even driving because she seemed so disoriented.”
After eight hours in the emergency room, where disinterested, disaffected, and dissociated medical professionals laughed and cajoled each other behind the nursing station, time spent with the patient – my mother – was a job, not a calling.